Talk for Talk's Sake

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Month: November 2013

Not much of either in my life right now. I was recently admonished by my [now ex] love for not having faith or hope in anything to stay positive and to fight off the sadness. This is true; the sadness has overcome me. I live in desolate alienation both in my circumstance and context. Single motherhood and grad school, along with a life history of poverty and violence, gives me little strength to hold myself together currently.

I sometimes come off as a victim, I know. This must turn people off. Turn people off enough to leave me and my son, the abandonment cycle always ongoing, creating more harm, pain, and sadness to endure and try to overcome.

If only there was someone to love me with empathy and without resentment for who I am and for who I am trying not to be.

But wishing for a person to love me is a pointless prayer. The person I love must not exist, and I should have known as much going into this business with him. He will even read this and rationalize his actions as right somehow. Though they are not right by any standard I know. I cannot rationalize bringing someone pain by my own rightness. I have made many mistakes by him, but not a one was out of love for myself over him.

And with that recognition of goodness, I wrote Jeremy Hammond today. Finally. I was sure to do it when I wasn’t crying, which has been a relentless verb in my life recently. If there was anyone in this world who lives by selfless action, it is he.

I once thought my love lived by the same ethos, and I think somewhere deep down he does. But not in his love for me. Capitalism and ego have taken over that ethos. I plan on writing a post about that soon. Because I do not blame my love for ceasing to honor me or treat me with the respect I deserve. No, I blame capitalism.

So, to begin my conversation with someone who refuses to let the overarching institutions speak for him and silence his ethos, I decided to share bits of Derrida with Jeremy. I will leave you with the quotes I shared and go on continuing my endless devotion to mourning my loss and honoring words my love now leaves unrequited.

“This guilt is originary, like original sin. Before any fault is determined, I am guilty inasmuch as I am responsible. What gives me my singularity, namely, death and finitude, is what makes me unequal to the infinite goodness of the gift that is also the first appeal to responsibility because responsibility is always unequal to itself: one is never responsible enough. One is never responsible enough because one is finite but also because responsibility requires two contradictory movements. It requires one to respond as oneself and as irreplaceable singularity, to answer for what one does, says, gives; but it also requires that, being good and through goodness, one forget or efface the origin of what one gives.” (Gift of Death 51)

“I can respond only to the one (or to the One), that is to the other, by sacrificing the other to that one. I am responsible to any one (that is to say any other) only by failing in my responsibilities to all the others, to the ethical and political generality. And I can never justify this sacrifice, I must always hold my peace about it.” (70)

Derrida focuses on the verb to Give. Whom to Give to.

You have given me silence, and I will return that gift because I love you. From now on. In silence, forever yours.